Today you will be with me: Monday, Holy Week Vigil
Today you will be with me.
Latorlépés: Thief Step, Zellei Boglárka Éva
Somewhere during the decade of my thirties—those years God was leading me through significant and often painful growth toward healing and wholeness—I realized I needed a sturdier foundation for all the grief I saw in my own life and in the lives of people around me. Then in 2012, during our first Holy Week in Austin, we attended our church’s Good Friday service, arranged around Jesus’ last words on the cross before he died. Seven members of the congregation responded to one of Jesus’ last words with their own story of suffering. I felt like I’d finally found a way to both adore Christ and acknowledge the lament of suffering in one communal act of worship. I’ve come to rely on this practice to prepare me for a more fullthroated resurrection celebration every Easter. Each Holy Week since then, following the example of our church in Austin, I’ve published a series of lament stories written by friends and colleagues to help us walk with Christ toward the cross. The guest writers tell stories of walking with Jesus on paths of suffering that include every sort of grief: illness, relational disillusionment, anxiety, joblessness, death of loved ones, and the death of dearly held dreams. Their stories have helped form my understanding of cruciform suffering. Along the way I’ve come to rely on a community who can sit with me in my grief rather than try to persuade me out of it. This became the sort of value that defined my relationships— those who welcomed me into their own suffering and shared mine became my dearest friends.
Listen to Last Words - a playlist for our Holy Week Vigil
The holy compulsion motivating the Holy Week lament series contends for this truth: We need to hear other people’s laments in the presence of Christ and his people. Specifically, we need to hear stories outside our own perspective and from all different stages of grief. I need to hear expressions of lament at the beginning, shocking part of grief, the middle, uncharted terrain of grief, and the lament that comes with the ending chapters of grief. I need to be surrounded by people who aren’t afraid to share their lament in all its unpredictability and strength.
This year, rather than inviting new guest post, I’m inviting you to consider your own mourning stories. Each day of Holy Week, we’ll keep vigil with Christ, each other, and our own selves. Each post will include links to previous years’ stories and some reflection questions for you to prayerfully listen to your own lament in the presence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have questions or just need someone to hear your story. I’m listening and praying for us all.
In peace and love,
Tamara
The Second Word: Today you will be with me in Paradise.
I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my supplications. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live. The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord: “O Lord, I pray, save my life!”
For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. —Psalm 116:1-4,8
One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation: And we indeed justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” —Luke 23:39-43
We praise you for your saints who have entered into joy, especially the loved ones we have lost whom we commend to your mercy and the penitent thief whom we remember together today. May we also come to share in your heavenly kingdom.
We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world. If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him. We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.
Reflect
“This lament is in no way meant to speculate on anyone’s good favor with Jesus or their place in the Kingdom of Heaven. After all, only Jesus himself has the authority to say “you will be with me in paradise.” I’m not here to condemn anyone for their choice to leave the church. I am retrieving lament in my choice to stay.”
“There was, to the end, her simple faith, her knowledge of Jesus’ today-companionship. The simplicity of her faith had often embarrassed me, but in that late season, I envied it, when my big goals actually didn’t bring me the joy that her faithfulness did. ...she lived with a simple trust in the promises Jesus made: Today… with me…”
“Can I really tell you what resurrection looks like? Have you seen it? Come to prison and you always see people come out of their graves.
Stories. Mundane miracles. Simple graces. Transfigurations. Heart transplants. And not just among the prisoners. Does anyone believe it? Would I believe it if I only read about it?...It is one thing to speak in Christian theory, it’s a whole ‘nother thing to see it face-to-face.”
“The thief on the cross never managed to practice walking a sanctified crime-free life before he died, and yet he is among the first to see Christ’s eternal kingdom. It is the glorious offense and power of the crucified Christ, that though my sister may never be freed on this earth, she can cry out to Jesus and hear him say,
’Today, dearest, you will be with Me in Paradise!’”
“The winds of blame, betrayal and plain adolescence / So powerful / They spun him wide from his family berth / Alone into / Adrift in / A sea of lonely experiments / With loves, highs, false prophecies and lesser gods ...
Can’t you set this right? / My prayers are bound by doubt. / Still we hang. / All of us / By a thread.”
Lament Stories Archive
Daily Lectionary for Holy Week
Read: Psalm 51; Psalm 69:1-23; Jeremiah 12:1-16; Philippians 3:1-14; John 12:9-19
Pray: Book of Common Prayer, The Collect for Monday of Holy Week
Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the Cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen
*Sunday Scripture readings are taken from Year A of the Book of Common Prayer 2019 (Anglican Church of North America). Daily Scripture readings are taken from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and include both Morning and Evening Psalms (Year 1)